All told

For whom the clinker clanks.

Dear Word Detective: I’ve pondered the question and I’ve done a little research on the internet only to find conflicting opinions on the subject. So I write to you, the master, to give me an answer to the question. Is it “all told” or “all tolled”? Even newspapers frustrate me on this one (not that they don’t frustrate me with their news as well). — L. Fiske.

Master, eh? So how come I can’t get my own dogs to do simple things, such as mowing the lawn? All they’re willing to do is wash dishes, and the plates smell funny afterward.

But since we seem to be in the mood for a pronouncement, here it is: the standard idiom is “all told,” not “all tolled,” and has been since it first appeared in the mid-19th century. What you have stumbled upon is a classic “eggcorn,” the substitution of a word or words that sound similar (or in this case exactly the same, “tolled” and “told” being homophones) to the “correct” words. The term “eggcorn” was coined in 2003 by linguist Geoffrey Pullum in regard to someone online using “eggcorn” instead of “acorn.” The key feature of an “eggcorn” is that the substitution makes a certain weird sense, as in the case of “eggcorn” itself. An acorn is indeed rather egg-shaped, and is a seed, as is corn, so if one has heard “acorn,” but never seen the word in print, writing it as “eggcorn” is not entirely crazy. The substitution of “for all intensive purposes” for “intents and purposes” is another semi-logical classic eggcorn.

“All tolled” is not only an eggcorn for “all told,” it’s apparently one that some people (according to the excellent Eggcorn Database) are willing to defend as the “correct” form. Their argument is that “tolled” means “added up,” which it does not and never has. “To toll” (of which “tolled” is the past tense) means “to ring a bell,” or (rarely) “to demand a tax or charge” (as at a toll booth). The noun “toll” means “tax, charge or levy.” The use of “toll” in “death toll” and similar phrases as a metaphorical equivalent of “price” does not mean that “to toll” means “to sum up.”

“All told,” on the other hand, does sound a bit odd. At first glance, “all told” seems to imply that whatever is being summed up is a sort of story being narrated or “told,” and when the story-telling is finished one says “all told,” a weirdly abrupt equivalent of “game over.”

But “tell” (of which “told” is the past tense) didn’t originally mean “to narrate.” Rooted in the Old English “tellen,” it meant “to count” or “to keep track of,” a sense we still use when we “tell time” and which underlies the word “teller,” a person who keeps track of money in a bank. “All told” embodies this archaic sense of “tell” in the past tense to mean “all counted and added up, in summation.” So “all told” can be properly used in a numerical sense (“All told, twelve football players were arrested”) as well as a more figurative sense of “the end result” (“All told, it was a pretty successful day”). Interestingly, the evolution of “to tell” from meaning “to count” to meaning “to narrate a story” is paralleled by another common word, “recount” (as well as “account” for the story itself).

66 comments to All told

What a treat to find your discussion of “all told/all tolled”. Growing up, I was taught (by whom?) that the expression “all told” was a contraction/variation of “all totalled” and that it originated in the accounting field. My wife, an accountant, has never heard of such a thing. Since you don’t mention “all totalled” in your presentation of “all told”, can I assume it’s not even a quasi-eggcorn, and simply wrong? Or is there something to it?

Friends;
Told and tolled appear to be from the same root. Afterall when a bell tolls the hours it is counting them out. Perhapse we should not look at this as two words but one word with two spellings.

I agree. For though “told” and “tell” may be justifiably archaic forms of “to count”, it is, well, archaic. Perhaps the phrase and its meaning should be allowed to grow and change, becoming “all tolled”?

I am in shock! The correct idiom is “all told”!!! The example cited, ”All told, twelve football players were arrested” to me seems to suggest that the football players were counted, there were 12 of them, hence, “All tolled/counted, twelve football players were arrested.” To me it seems a stretch to say the meaning of the phrase is something like “not to mince words/to tell you the whole truth, 12 football players were arrested,” ALL TOLD.

Sherry Wolf, M.A., Teaching English As A Second Language, Georgetown University, 1971

I’m still just as confused as ever. To me, both approaches make sense. “All Told”, meaning “after everything has been said, the result or outcome is _____”. And, “All Tolled”, meaning “after everything has been added up/weighed & measured, the result or outcome (or path forward) is _____”. They both work for me.

After gathering cows from various pens, getting them in the truck and heading to the auction, my Kentucky Dad would likely say something like “All toll, we got 18 head.”

The years go by, I leave the farm, find myself writing for a national magazine, and I use the phrase “$5 million here, $10 million there, all toll, we have $15 million dollars tied up in obsolete inventory…”.

Yes. “All toll”, just like Dad, and Uncle Ralph, and the whole family would say anytime they had to sum up parts into a whole.

May be I am wrong but the theme looks as follows:
should we remember of numbers when talking and of words when summarizing/finalizing them in two possible ways: to make smb/smth in or to make smb/smth out.
To make it sound academically one can propose:
All told, weighted and counted.
What we need is King Solomon’s books on wisdom and the Bible’s narration on his house-building. What he has left unweighted and non-counted were pagan idols allowed in Jerusalem. They were foul language the people fouled their hands with.
What we have is two languages: Abel’s and Cain’s.

It seems as if both spellings are arguably correct. One, (“all told”) appears to be the preferred form, at least in this culture. Very often the preferred spelling can change simply based on the culture/country that you are in. One example of this is the word defense. I’ve recently learned that in some English speaking countries, Canada being one, the preferred way to spell this word is with a ‘c’ as in defence. Since both sides have good arguments, I say just let both be acceptable and chalk another one up to the craziness of the English language.

Why is it that Americans blame Canada for so many things that we have nothing to do with (like helping terrorists gain easy access to the US, for example)?

The word “defence” originated in Britain; the progenitor of the English language. As we are an English speaking nation we inherited this spelling, although in modern times, thanks to our close association with the US, “defense” is also considered correct and is likely more commonly used than the British spelling.

I think you are being a little thin skinned about this…. defence or defense? Google is telling me that the first one is misspelled. but if i had an UK dictionary queued for the colourful differences it would be the other way around. I think I will stay on de fence on this one :P

I wonder if this is regional. I’m sure that many years ago I heard people use the phrase “toll up” to mean “add up,” but I cannot now find examples of that usage. Oddly, I’m willing to accept “all told” as preferable, but it makes me dislike the expression, and I will probably no longer use it. Although it may have once meant “all counted,” it now implies “Now that I have told you everything, . . .” which seems impertinent.

The term “eggcorn” was coined in 2003 by linguist Geoffrey Pullum in regard to someone online using “eggcorn” instead of “acorn.” The key feature of an “eggcorn” is that the substitution makes a certain weird sense, as in the case of “eggcorn” itself.
The use of pronouns “himself” “itself” “themselves,” etc.as “itself” is used in the above example drive me to distraction. What does “itself” add to your point? Wouldn’t “…as in the case of “eggcorn.” have sufficed?
The president himself said…?????
What part of speech is “himself” in that example?
Let’s put a stop to this nonsense! Please, I’m begging you.

the phrase “the President himself said” emphasizes the fact that the source is the specific person mentioned not a lackey reading a press release or a third party who supposedly witnessed such a statement (aka a first person statement)

at one time such a distinction added great weight over an account that might later be repudiated should the supposed admission prove embarrassing or be repudiated if the stated future facts not come to flourishion. Unfortunately current political practices and massive media coverage have even brought first person accounts into disfavor with statements like “No New Taxes” and “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” both of which were stated by the respective presidents themselves

Use of “itself” is often redundant. It’s not the only example of redundancy in the English language, and redundancy is a feature that aids in making communication more robust. Certainly redundancy has less use in a written missive, since one can always go back and re-read an important word. However, even readers will place unconscious weight on words and concepts that appear more than once, no matter how carefully they scrutinize every word. And let’s face it, some readers, or all readers some of the time, are just plain lazy and want to get to the end of the sentence, and it becomes a kind of in-the-head audible script.

Redundancy out of the way, there is still room for the word “itself” to have logical weight and value, since it is distinguishing the further use of the same word “eggcorn” from its previous uses, and acknowledging that the same example is being used twice, thus preventing confusion.

If one is attempting to compress piece of written language, then it probably does make sense to remove redundant bits. Definite and indefinite articles seem prime candidates also. And of course, one should bear in mind possibility that “itself” is not always necessary to convey logical thought with appropriate amount of weight. “Itself” could indeed distract from other important parts of sentence.

As to the question of what part of speech “himself” functions as in

“The president himself said . . .”

it is an adverb, in my opinion, because it modifies the clause “the president said”. It indicates that the president was not necessarily quoting someone else, and it emphasizes the role of the president in the sentence. It also serves as a defense against possible accusations that what the president said was against his character or nature.

Take the example:

“The boy himself said he threw the stone.”

It wouldn’t be in the boy’s nature to admit to something he didn’t do, so this accusation is anticipated and defended against by the use of the adverb “himself”.

The above comment wraps it all up…lol. Very clever comments and fun reading. I landed here because I read “all told” in an article and could have sworn it was wrong since I have believed the phrase to be “all tolled” for my whole life.

I conducted some research just now and I found many, many sites that corroborated the “all told” etymology and others that argue between “all told/all tolled”. However, I found neither no site that discussed “all totaled/all to’aled”, nor have I ever read or heard that derivation before.

“All told” is correct. “All tolled” is an “eggcorn” that apparently makes some of you feel good, but is incorrect. “All to’aled” has never existed.

A little far-fetched, perhaps, but we’ve all heard the expression “ringing up a sale.” One could easily associate the summing up of things with the sound of a bell – not exactly tolling perhaps, but, hey.

I thought folks here might find it interesting and even instructive to know that Hebrew (both biblical and modern) has the exact same phenomenon! The Hebrew root S-P-R (though the ‘P’ is often pronounced ‘F’) forms the basis of “l’sapeir” – to tell, as well as “lispor” – to count. Other cognates include “sefer” – book, “mispar” – number, “sipur” – story, and “s’fira” – enumeration. Also interesting is that the root also means to cut away, as in a haircut (tisporet). Perhaps this is a link to “separate”, and hence the common denominator of telling and tallying (supposedly not cognates, BTW) is that one methodically and in a specific order removes from the whole one portion at a time. That would explain the connection between telling a story by recounting each part of the tale and counting a collection of items by paring off one item at a time.

I am a “word woman” and I believe that “all tolled” makes sense along with “all totaled” . “All told” sounds autocratic and imperious (as in “It’s my opinion and interpretation”) rather than a math summary with numbers.

Let’s learn to leave the folk etymology behind and stick to known facts, K? It’s “all told”. I don’t like it either, but them’s the facts. We learn these things by searching our literature for the earliest uses of a phrase–not by reasoning things out.

Suggestion….since languages evolve (iPad wasn’t a word 10 years ago) and since most of us now reason that tolled makes sense, then just keep using it. Then in 50 years when the question is revisited, the fact will be that popular opinion changed as people preferred tolled and the spelling morphed over time. Be the future you want to see.

I have come across “all told” many times but have always believed it to be “all tolled.” I confess that I am a bit disappointed to find out that “all told” is correct. Aside from it making my belief wrong (which I never appreciate), it just seems a bit less poetic.

Whoa. Did anyone actually read the explanation of “Told” and “Tolled?” Most of the arguments here imply that since “tolled” means to count, the phrase makes sense. The explanation clearly states that “tolled” does NOT mean to count, and NEVER HAS. It is misused in that sense; therefore, “all tolled” does NOT make sense!

I’m going to stick with all tolled, sorry but it just makes good sense! Next you’ll be telling me I should say “home in” when the phrase is “hone in”-as in “the Twins are looking to hone in on their 3rd World Series Championship this fall”! All tolled they will have won 3 World Series in their history!

Even though the noun form of “toll” can be used to reference a “total”, the verb form never means that. “Death toll” means “the cost, as measured in dead bodies”, like the death toll from a storm or whatever. No one ever says “when the bodies were tolled”–that would mean someone was going to each body and exacting a tax from them, or attempting to use them as bells.

No one ever uses “toll” as a verb to mean (the verb form of) “total”. Yes, a death toll is equal to the total number of dead bodies. The toll of a toll road is equal to the amount of money you pay, which is a quantity you could arrive at by addition. But the verb form of toll means

to ring a bell

or to announce by ringing a bell, or whatever.

You “exact a toll” or something “takes a toll on you”. The

The fact that “death toll” and “the total number of dead” refer to the same number seems to be leading people to jump to the conclusion that “toll” _means_ total. Total is also used as a verb (the act of adding up) and a noun (the result you got when you added them up). It’s possible that people are making the mistake

Toll, in the sense being used there, means “price”. What was the “price” of this battle in terms of dead bodies? We call that the death toll. We don’t say “we tolled the dead bodies, there were 80″. It doesn’t make sense, it’s not used this way. You’re using the fact that you’ve always thought “all told” was “all tolled” to backfit the idea that “toll” is used as a verb to mean “total”. It isn’t.

I came here looking for an answer to the burning question, and got what I came for. I was about to swallow the whole explanation when I read the rebuttals and got to thinking. I’m going to chalk the use of tolled/told up to vernacular and personal preference.

On one hand, “all tolled” does carry with it (to me) the understanding that a count of sort was made. All totaled (or do you spell it with 2 letters “L”?). All tallied. And in that respect it makes perfect sense numerically.

“All told,” on the other hand, appears to refer to the relating or “telling” of something. Would you say that a “telling look” means the face someone makes when he is doing math in his head? So “all told” sounds more like “story complete”, and makes sense in the more figurative setting: “All told, we had a lot of fun bowling!”

And of course there’s the psychological aspect. Very few people like to accept that things they were taught – or the things they ‘know’ – are wrong, so they stick with, and ofttimes defend the way they are accustomed to. I guess I’m one of those folks too.

@Josh of Boots: I think when people use “himself” or any of its kin as an adjunct to a noun/subject it is redundancy for redundancy’s sake – sort of like a verbal underscore (“An added extra plus”). Inflection can make the difference between redundancy and clarification. “The president himself said …” with the emphasis on “himself” would clarify the statement by indicating it was “not his press secretary”, whereas without any special emphasis it might only be melodramatic redundancy.

Some people – especially those who write “B” movies – think that saying something twice gives it more weight. “I… must… MUST disconnect… the bomb… and save… mankind!”

@Christopher Beck: Early cash registers had a bell inside that would ring when certain keys were depressed. Also, when the keys were depressed, metal tabs marked with prices or methods of payment (“Cash,” “Charge,” “No Sale,” “Tax,” “Total,” etc.) would pop up and display in a window at the top of the register. “Ringing up a sale” is likely a reference to the ringing of the bell and the rising up of the totals that came from using the cash register each time a sale was made. Nowadays folks use the term even when the transaction isn’t conducted on a cash register.

The bell disappeared from cash registers once the machines became electronic. I suppose to bring the phrase up to date we should say “beep up a sale.”

Interesting discussion. I am a lawyer who used the term “all tolled” in a draft of a legal brief. I wasn’t sure whether I should use “all tolled” or “all told,” so I put that question into Google. Your site came up at the top of the list, and your explanation and the previous comments greatly aided my understanding of the question and answers. My conclusion, however, was to remove the phrase completely because I did not want the judge to spend his time considering the proper use of the phrase rather than the point of the brief. I am almost certain, however, to “entertain” my family at the dinner table with my knowledge of the arguments pro and con for each version!

In your exposition regarding Geoffrey Pullum’s creating of the word “eggcorn” in 2003, I believe you are missing a very central point, which is that is also a devilishly good pun on the linguistic term “inkhorn,” which Wikipedia defines as “…any foreign borrowing (or a word created from existing word roots by an English speaker) into English deemed to be unnecessary or overly pretentious.”

Linguists such as Pullum use “inkhorn” and “inkhorn term” all the time, and there’s no question he would have been aware of the word. So “eggcorn” is actually a malapropism inside a pun — or maybe a pun inside a malapropism, I dunno. One or the other. But in any event, one should be aware that an “eggcorn” term plays off the phonics as well as the inclusion of the notion of pretentiousness aspect of what an eggcorn phrase does, and it is self-parodying. I mean, wow. That’s one really deep, twisted, masterfully done neologism. Quite breath-taking, the more you delve into it.

I’ve always used all told. He did a clear and concise explanation of it. Times change and some words become less popular, but that doesn’t mean we chunk them out the window for what’s hot and new. Keep doing that and we may well forget what language we started off speaking all together.

All told. Strangely, I’ve never heard of Englishmen having this confusion (although I don’t know the nationalities of the commenters). I think this is a classic case of people never before having seen the phrase in print writing it down they way they assumed it would be. I agree that this corruption should be let go, otherwise we’ll start accepting phrases like “could of/would of/should of” (which are alarming in their pervasiveness) in the name of allowing the English language to “evolve”.

Interesting posts. It’s always been “all told” where I’m from. The thought that it might be “all tolled” never entered my mind until I read the article. Personally, “all tolled” reminds me of seeing the usage “car pull” instead of “car pool”, which may “make sense” but also makes me cringe. Regarding redundancies,(I’ve used them myself)I recall a friend’s joke; “The crab puffs were so good I had three myself”…”So, how many did you have if you count everyone?”

Once upon a time, “google” was just a noun. I can appreciate that this will make the purists cringe (I for one refuse to accept “fantabulous” or “ginormous” into my vocabulary), but I’m going to verb toll.

Toll
-verb
1. To count. Origin -> 5 minutes ago
ex. “I told y’all to toll them taters so as we knows how much vittles we’ll have for supper.”

So maybe “all tolled” is wrong now, but let’s give it some time and google it again in ten years.

Yikes!!! I have to agree with Harold Ethington from his June 24th, 2009 comment. Let me guess. If he hadn’t specifically said Kentucky, I would have sworn that his folks were from New England. Regardless, this is such a conundrum that I think I shall refrain from using this saying in any written form. Too bad, though. I always liked it. At least I can still use it in oral encounters and no one will be able to judge my useage/spelling.

Fascinating. I am about to send an email with the expression in question and still am not sure whether to use told or tolled, although I am leaning toward told since I find tolled to be pretentious.
Furthermore, eggcorn is not a true eggcorn. Using eggcorn for acorn results from the mispronunciation of egg as Aig, i.e., the long-A sound. Egg should be pronounce with the short e, ehgg. Then there is no confusion, because nobody, but nobody says ehcorn for acorn. (P.s., somepeople say Laig for leg. A good example of this is the Jeff Bridges character in “The Door in the Floor,” which I highly recommend)

and you pay a toll based on the number of vehicles or axles, or weight…

The toll to ferry sheep across a river was based on the number of sheep in the herd, etc. So using toll as an indication of counting, as in “all counted up” seems perfectly correct to me and those who use “all told” are just unaware that the word is spelled “tolled.”

Wow, sounds a lot like counting. Just because a word might have more than two meanings, doesn’t mean you can just decide to exclude one all ‘willy-nilly’.

“All tolled, my week sucked”, means “add up all the [figurative] destruction I suffered last week, and it sucks”. This is clearly correct usage.

“All told, it turns out he was being fair”, means “once all the story is known, the whole reveals something the individual parts can not”. This is also correct usage (including the rare “can not” in two words, since “can” was also a real possibility).

So now we have two separate idioms, which mean different things (yet somewhat similar), but sound the same. What will English think of next?

Wow. Reading some of these comments, I’m afraid that pretty soon we’ll all be saying “they succame to their opponents” because, after all, it sounds right. It isn’t, and neither is “all tolled.” It’s “all told” and always has been. You can’t just change English usage every time you find out you were wrong about something!

Indeed, long before the era of automobiles, it was common for toll bridges to list an animal-specific menu of crossing fees. So if the rancher came across with 2 horses, 3 head of cattle, 4 goats and and a dog, his “toll” would be the sum of the fees for each animal, plus himself. “All tolled, I paid 57 cents to cross the river.”

Wow, this is all very umfangreich. My question, stabbing in quickly from the side: in the song “Hangover” there is a line “drink until I’m told up” Does that mean drink until I’m even? or think its enough or is it a type error and should be until I throw-up or …..?

“all told” is a way to skip most facts but show that they are taken into account anyway.

consider a multiple-car pile-up on the expressway, interstate, autobaun, tollway, or what ever word your country uses to indicate a road, usually set off for single direction traffic, to facilitate high volume travel.

an account of the devastation could describe each and every vehicle, how it was mangled and how many persons were killed, how many were injured and possibly how many “miraculously escaped injury”…. *yawn* ho-hum

can you imagine trying to read such an account that tries to TELL ALL that happened?
but instead if two dozen near repetitive accounts it is much less boring to read a couple accounts and finish with:
ALL TOLD, in the 24 car accident there were 38 injuries sent to the hospital (11 in critical condition) dozens of minor scrapes and bruises and 5 pronounced dead on the scene
UPDATE: as of 30 minutes before press time, 5 are still in critical condition with 9 more expected to be released tomorrow in absence of further complications all others have been treated and released